Perspective Perspective is a way of making your drawing seem more real. Drawings without perspective look flat and amateurish. Here's a simple drawing without any perspective: Perspective describes how objects seem to get smaller as they get farther away. Outside, you can see to the horizon, and something that far away would appear to be a dot. To make drawing have perspective, you mark a point on the horizon yourself and make everything shrink to that point, called the 'vanishing point'. Here's the beginning of the same simple drawing with a vanishing point added: Now connect all the corners of the house and the near side of the lake with thin straight lines to the vanishing point, like this: Now draw the rest of the house and lake, keeping within the vanishing lines. The back ends of the house should be parallel to the front ends. Other details are added next: the foreground road, the foreground trees, and the nearest window frame. Draw in the vanishing lines. Now draw between these lines to show what happens as you get farther away; the trees get smaller, the road gets narrower, and the window narrows: Here's the final picture with all the vanishing lines removed. Compare it to the first picture (reproduced on the right), and you can see that perspective has made it look more realistic! Perspective No perspective When you observe things from an angle, you really see things from two perspectives at once. Things seem to get smaller in two directions. You can increase the realism of outdoor scenes by using TWO vanishing points! Here's a simple sketch to show you what we mean: Indoor scenes can also benefit from using at least one vanishing point. For example, when drawing a room, the vanishing point could be near the middle of the back wall. This is how you might set up such a sketch: Adding the edges, walls, and other details, remembering to follow the vanishing lines, would transform your sketch into something like this: Notice how realistic and 'pleasing to the eye' the shapes look. Perspective can really improve the look of your drawings ... give it a try! Resources